Ivy League College Admissions Anxiety Misplaced

Applying to College
1

<p>As someone in the midst of the application process (ED to Dartmouth), I can't help but be aware of the hand-wringing in the popular press, on the pages of CC and amongst my peers regarding the difficulty of gaining admission to a top school. </p>

<p>After reviewing the numbers provided by the College Board on SAT Percentile Ranks for Men and Women (2006) which states clearly that only 3% of all test takers in a given year score above 2100 on the combined SAT tests and after doing some rough calculations of my own, I think a clear case can be made that the admission situation may be quite different than we believe. </p>

<p>Bear with me as I share my thinking and some of my assumptions.</p>

<p>According to CEEB roughly 1.4 million students take the SATs a year and only 3% score 2100 or higher (a reasonable proxy score for Ivy League and Ivy League equivalent admission, given strong grades, ECs etc.). Let's say the population of colleges these top scorers will apply to are the Top 20 Universities and Top 15 LACs according to US News & World Report rankings. A rigorous program at one of these schools provides an Ivy League education, more or less. Let's agree on that. </p>

<p>This gives us a starting pool of 42,000 top students. Let add 5,000 equivalently scored ACT takers for a pool of 47,000. Let's subtract 15% from the pool, students who for whatever reason will not apply to one of top schools and another 10% for those who are top scorers but seriously flawed from an admissions standpoint, due to poor grades, personal problems, etc. </p>

<p>We now have a pool of say 35,250 students. This is the "demand side". On the "supply side", if we take the schools mentioned above, we have roughly 26,000 places for freshman (openings). We have, therefore, 35,250 highly qualified and legitimate students (and I think is conservatively high) chasing 26,000 seats. </p>

<p>I think what we have is a resource allocation problem, not a problem of demand wildly outstripping supply. </p>

<p>I therefore conclude that if you are high senior wanting to go to a top school and you have SAT scores above the 2100 mark, excellent grades, strong recommendations and ECs than the chance of your being able to get in to one of the top schools is quite high.</p>

<p>There is a lot of fear mongering out there, and an entire industry has grown in support of it. We are also, students and parents alike, narcisstically attached to our dread and to a highly precious notion that there is only one top school out there for us. </p>

<p>Throw off the chains strong students, as FDR said "there is nothing to fear but fear itself"!</p>

2

<p>Very cool argument. I am taking AP Econ right now, so the supply and demand idea does make sense.</p>

3

<p>Yale Class of 2011</p>

<p>Applicant #: 19323
Admit #: 1860<br>
Admit Percentage: 9.63%</p>

<p>Yale's admit rate went up this year.</p>

<p>This is not just a resource allocation problem.</p>

4

<p>Wow balletgirl. Great info. If I understood your data correctly, then this should make everyone happy. Where did you get your info? According to your stats, what would the actual acceptance rate be?</p>

5

<p>If I wrote of the students' SAT/ACT scores and GPAs who were admitted last year to the nation's most elite colleges and universities, you either would not believe me or your faith would be restored in the concept of holistic admissions. Any student scoring above 650 on each portion of the SAT, should not refrain from applying to almost any of the top twenty colleges and universities. The exceptions are CalTech, Harvey Mudd and MIT which seek higher math scores; but, then consider a female, URM applying to an engineering program and it's a whole new ballgame. The OP is correct.</p>

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<p>icy,
Can you elaborate please?</p>

7

<p>Only to the extent that HYP & S were on that list. I am not comfortable naming the LACs due to their small class size and confidential info. Reasons varied from gifted talent in music or acting or art to minority status, economic status (both low and high), legacy to compelling essays. I am also personally aware of outstanding students getting rejected from elite, but solid match, schools. Even well qualified legacies. Apparently all those admissions folks actually read the applications.</p>

8

<p>Out of that 26000 seats, you will need to allocate some to atheletes, URM, low income, legacies, special music/art students...There are not that many seats left after you allocate to all of those special applicants. To put it in perspective, my daughter's graduating class had over 35% kids in ivies and top 15 schools, and 50% of them got in as recruited atheletes.</p>

9

<p>keep in mind a lot of kids who are probably less than qualified anyway apply.</p>

<p>and BalletGirl...I'm applying ED to Dartmouth as well. Best of luck!</p>

10

<p>guitars101,</p>

<p>The data on the 2006 SATs comes directly from the CEEB. I have it in a PDF, which I pulled from a CC link sometime ago. The data is quite unambiguous. The data on seats available came from simply my own calculation, adding all the freshman spots at 35 schools. It's simple addition. As to the real admit rates among students who score 2100+, have top grades and strong ECs/talents at top schools, I can't say. I would surmise that it is very favorable. </p>

<p>enderkin,</p>

<p>I do think that the admit rate at Yale for the profile of student that I described above to guitars101 and in my post is much higher than 9%. My guess is that 50% of the applicants to Yale don't have 2100+ score, equivalent SAT IIs, top grades and exceptional talents/ECs. My bigger point, which you may have missed is this. If this type of student applies to Yale, Carleton, Rice, Pomona and Chicago as an example, the chance that he or she gets into one of these schools is near certain. </p>

<p>I do think we have a resource allocation problem in that we have a very inefficient market currently. Part of the problem has to do with information or the lack thereof. If top colleges simply said this (and they never will). "If you don't have 2100+ SATs (pick the number), nearly all As in tough courses and don't have a talent, athletically, artistically, otherwise, don't bother applying", we would see a huge drop in the number of applicants. Right now, no one has the incentive to do this, hence we see the fear-mongerers and the economic exploiters at play.</p>

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<p>Oldfort,</p>

<p>I agree with you to some extent, but let me put a somewhat finer point on your argument. Some of that top student group (the 3%) I have outlined includes URMs, legacies, athletes, etc in it. I know this to be the case, for example, with athletes at Dartmouth who for some time now have been held to the same admission standards as everyone else. Some have even argued that they have been held to higher standards (they note Dartmouth's dreadful football record over the past 10 years). </p>

<p>As well, I believe that artists and athletes increasingly represent "talent" to admisssion committees and all things being equal (SAT scores, grades, etc) they will continue to be admitted at higher rates. </p>

<p>My sense, and I have no data on it, is that there are very few students at the top schools who don't deserve to be there based on stingent academic and talent requirements -less than 6-7% perhaps.</p>

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<p>You really are well informed. The President of Dartmouth was trying to get rid of the football team altogether. There is a thread on CC which discusses this at length. Many recruited athletes to the Ivies are crew, or rowing, members and often have outstanding numbers. Curious as to whether oldfort's daughter went to a boarding or day prep school, or, possibly, Lawrenceville which has both.</p>

13

<p>
[quote]
Yale Class of 2011</p>

<p>Applicant #: 19323
Admit #: 1860
Admit Percentage: 9.63%</p>

<p>Yale's admit rate went up this year.</p>

<p>This is not just a resource allocation problem.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Lots of people apply to Yale who don't have the stats to get in. And, this is only Yale.</p>

14

<p>BalletGirl - I have practical data from last year. A very talented girl soccer player, but an average student, was told by Harvard to only take regular courses (no honor or APs) Junior and Senior years in order to maintain a certain GPA. She knew she was going to Harvard before anyone. A below average student with a great talent in tennis was admitted to Williams (GC is worried about her chance of graduating). A top 30% student, who is a legacy, was admitted to Duke over many other more qualified students. An Olympic caliber swimmer was told by Stanford to at least maintain a B+ and he is in. Unfortunately he couldn't do that. These are all students at my daughter's school, many of them personal friends. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, there is even more of a disadvantage if you are a girl. Statiscally, girls get better grades than boys. Therefore, boys may be admitted with lower stats than girls. My daughter joked, "all boys must have made a pact to get lower grades and girls just haven't caught on."</p>

15

<p>hate to be a wet blanket, but I totally agree with oldfort</p>

<p>
[quote]
We now have a pool of say 35,250 students. This is the "demand side". On the "supply side", if we take the schools mentioned above, we have roughly 26,000 places for freshman (openings). We have, therefore, 35,250 highly qualified and legitimate students (and I think is conservatively high) chasing 26,000 seats.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Are you looking at students who scored 2100 on one sitting or are you also considering students who scored a 2100 after super scoring? The number will definitely increase. Have you considered the fact that some students will accumulate multiple admissions? There will definitely be some overlap in the 26,000 seats that are available because overall, more than 32,5000 students will be accepted between the ED, EA and RD rounds. While ultimately they can only matriculate at one school, it does not negate the fact that with the exception of Princeton, no other school plans on expanding their classes.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Out of that 26000 seats, you will need to allocate some to atheletes, URM, low income, legacies, special music/art students...There are not that many seats left after you allocate to all of those special applicants.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>very true. Also keep in mind that much of the focus on the ivies and the elite LACs is to craft a well rounded class (so SAT scores and numbers are only a small part of the story).</p>

<p>In the case of Dartmouth; 1287 students applied for 397 early seats in the class of 2011. The school prides it self on the fact that only about 1/3 of its applicants come through ED so the ED pool will not be increasing and haven't shifted much in the past 5 years.</p>

<p><a href="http://thedartmouth.com/2007/01/04/news/early/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://thedartmouth.com/2007/01/04/news/early/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Of those 398 students approximately 85% of the admitted students fell into one of the following 4 categories:</p>

<p>~ 30% are going to be recruted athletes
~14.5 % are going to be legacies
~5 to 6% will be coming from the international pool of candidates.
~28% were vals
~7.5% were U.S. citizens or permanent residents living outside of the U.S.</p>

<p>for the pool that did not fit into one of those 5 categories, there are now ~56students (14%) who will ultimately be accepted and we have not even touched on outliers such as URMs, low income students, developmental admits, and the prodigy that some professor is looking for or the department that is trying to raise its numbers.</p>

<p>Although the numbers did increase for students from the western, southern and midwestern states, overall students from the North East (New England and the mid-atlantic states) were almost 50% of the class admitted ED.</p>

<p>I would invite you to go back through the post and look at all of the students with 2100s that were not accepted ED or RD last year.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The President of Dartmouth was trying to get rid of the football team altogether. There is a thread on CC which discusses this at length.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>As long as the alumni keeps writing those big checks, football and the greek system are not leaving hanover anytime soon (D said there was a really big crowd at home coming 2 weeks ago).</p>

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<p>
[quote]
According to CEEB roughly 1.4 million students take the SATs a year and only 3% score 2100 or higher (a reasonable proxy score for Ivy League and Ivy League equivalent admission, given strong grades, ECs etc.).

[/quote]

Do they keep statistics on multiple test administrations? Since most top schools superscore, from the school's point of view there are likely more 2100+ scorers. (EDIT: Oops, sybbie, cross-post. :))</p>

<p>The MIT admissions statistics (here</a>) indicate that 18% of 700+ CR scorers and 16% of 700+ math scorers are admitted. Considering that 70% of applicants are ranked in the top 5% of their high school classes, I don't think it's a glaring grade weakness that's keeping out the vast majority of 700+ scorers.</p>

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<p>sybbie719 and oldfort,</p>

<p>You have fallen into the trap of simply arguing from personal anecdotes. While I don't disgaree with you on any of the individual cases you cite, I don't think your argument can be generalized, given the incontrovertible data on the relatively low number of SAT takers who score above 2100+.</p>

<p>My point is simple and it is simply this. If you score above 2100+ on the SATs (super scored or not) and you have top grades in rigorous courses and you have a talent and you have good ECs than your chance of getting into one of the top school is very, very high. </p>

<p>I think it is all too convenient to blame URMs, or athletes, or legacies, or international students or whomever for the seeming vagaries of the elite college admissions process. While I perfectly understand that I may not get into my first choice college, ED or not, I do feel confident that I will get into an equivalent.</p>

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<p>OP - our posts are not here to burst your bubble. There is no blame here for kids with special hooks. It is just a reality. If you are an average candidate with top GPA, 2200+ SAT, great ECs, your chance of getting into ivies is still less than 10%. Contrary to popular believe, not that many unqualified candidates apply to those top schools. Do not let your sense of "unfound confidence" prevent you from applying to some good, true safeties. My daughter had close to very perfect credential (except her SATs were in mid 2100) got into 5 out of 12 schools she applied to, waitlisted at 2(got off both of them). My daughter is very happy at her school. It all worked out.</p>

<p>All I am trying to prevent is some of you not getting into school next year. A not so good school would still be a school you could transfer from. Another anecdote is a top student (2nd in class) did not get into any school, was waitlisted at Harvard. My daughter's school GC had to do a lot of pushing to get her a delayed admit to Harvard.</p>

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<p>Molliebatmit,</p>

<p>I don't know about super scoring and how that it gets calculated into the CEEB data. Perhaps someone with more detailed knowledge can help us here. </p>

<p>What we don't know at MIT are rejection percentages for those individual who score about 700 on all three SAT exams. You also then have to account for the 30% percent not in the top 5% of their class. </p>

<p>My point is not about the difficulty of getting into any one particular school. It is this, students with 2100+, with great grades and ECs will, using MIT as example, have a very good chance of getting into one of the following MIT, Harvey Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, Rice, Cornell and Cooper Union.</p>

20

<p>If you apply to all the top 20 schools, yes I think someone with the 2100+ SAT, good grades, etc. will get into AT LEAST ONE. But if you only apply to 2, 3, maybe even 5 of those schools, there is not as much guarantee. Your numbers that you researched may seem convincing, but on closer inspection those numbers only guarantee that your application will be looked at very carefully at any specific school. However, the grand scheme of things is, with the appropriate number of reaches or high matches, one can be reasonably certain to secure admission to one of these schools, given that he or she is a strong candidate for admission.</p>